LA Clippers: How the team will navigate an abrupt start

The LA Clippers will have to adjust quickly thanks to this abrupt season start.

The 2020-2021 NBA season will be kicking off on Dec. 22, much sooner than anyone had predicted, including the players. Adjusting to this shortened off-season will require the utmost care from contending teams like the LA Clippers, as there are more challenges than ever.

2020 saw the sporting world grind to a screeching halt. Seasons were put on hold, players were sent home to quarantine, and everything was up in the air for a few months. Then, miraculously, we figured out ways for sports to resume–and to the credit of people the world over, that went off largely without a hitch. For better or worse, we were able to put a bow on whatever the 2019-2020 season was. Now the time has come for things to pick back up. Only we’re still in the thick of a global pandemic and it’s simply not reasonable to play out an entire season of any sport in an NBA-style bubble.

The NBA was masterful in the way they orchestrated their return over the summer, but actually starting a season with all of the teams in their home cities is a completely different game. However, fast as it may seem basketball has come back, the NBA has had a few months now to watch as their fellow North American leagues made a return. And, as such, they (and their teams) have enjoyed the benefit of witnessing the perils that can come with that in real-time. If nothing else, it’s become clear that things haven’t gotten any easier and for teams to succeed, they’ll need to operate with the utmost care, particularly for teams like the LA Clippers, where the goal is a championship and the margin for error is razor-thin.

Why the quick start matters

There’s been a lot of talk around the shortened off-season that the NBA is experiencing between this season and the last for a myriad of reasons. The motives for doing so are one thing, but the potential impact on players’ health, is a more immediate concern, especially for teams like the Clippers, who only a little over three months ago (98 days) were participating in playoff basketball. To put that into context, after winning the NBA Finals in 2019 with the Toronto Raptors, Kawhi Leonard had over four months (131 days) between then and opening night with the Clippers.

To compound this, it seems that players were about as blindsided as the general public that the season would be starting this soon. So you have players dealing with a truncated off-season as well as relatively short notice to begin preparing their bodies for NBA action. A perfect storm for soft tissue injuries–something the Clippers and their players are all too familiar with.

Not too long ago, in the NBA bubble, an abrupt restart of the season led to Patrick Beverley suffering a calf strain, which forced him to miss the tail end of the Clippers’ eight seeding games, as wells as the opening few in their bout with the Dallas Mavericks. His absence (and Reggie Jackson’s increased role) became very pronounced as that series rolled on. But that was against elite competition–being able to lean on guys like Reggie Jackson in the regular season will be a great asset in a situation like this.

We don’t yet know how the draft or free agency will shake out for the Clippers, but the hope is that they’ll be able to maintain depth similar to that of the 2019-2020 season. Providing players further down the depth chart with a somewhat increased role while the Clippers’ starters work their way up to playing ~32 minutes a night at full speed could play a big part in maintaining overall team health.

We know that Kawhi will have his days off to ensure his tendinopathy doesn’t flare up, as he should, but the Clippers will need to be extra mindful of keeping everyone healthy up and down the roster with such an abrupt start to the season. We’ve seen what a condensed ramp-up period can do to players in the NFL, decimating teams with injury. Avoiding that will be crucial in the short-term, but in the long-term as well, as the team works to build chemistry before the playoffs.

Looking for a potential silver lining in this, you might point to the fact that Coach Ty Lue and his coaching staff would likely benefit from playing with different rotations and lineups. Lue was of course part of Doc Rivers’ coaching staff this past season, but as we came to see, assistant coaches didn’t have the most input on that topic.

Navigating the pandemic

Finally, it goes without saying that the players themselves will have to be extra disciplined at the beginning as well as throughout the season as far as the pandemic goes. We don’t know exactly when the vaccine will be available to the NBA, but it definitely won’t be when the season begins. Players around the league will probably contract COVID-19 at some point–they’ll be tested daily, but there won’t be a bubble to protect them from the general public like there was over the summer.

Making sure that your team isn’t the one with an outbreak will go a long way, both from the perspective of maintaining continuity on the floor as well as showing that they’re serious about trying to win. Even a few players coming down with the illness would have very serious implications. So, you’d hope to see an organization-wide abundance of caution. It’s not fun, but as is the case for all of us, it’s necessary.